“The play makes my heart ache every single day. I’m weepy after every rehearsal. It is such a beautiful, sad, wonderful love story,” says Robinson, who plays an African- American seamstress in New York in 1905 who falls in love with a Jewish fabric salesman.

In this highly acclaimed dramatic romance by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, the seamstress is also in a long-distance relationship with a man of colour.

“There are themes of class and caste and colour that run through this play, but at its heart it is a love story and that’s what makes it so universal.”

Robinson says she has wanted to play the seamstress, the role Viola Davis originated in New York, for more than seven years.

“I was only able to come to Calgary because all the stars aligned.”

She was offered the role but had to decline because she was starring in the TV detective series King.

“I was starring in Da Kink in my Hair in San Diego on our hiatus when I got word that King has been cancelled. I immediately called my agent and Nigel Shawn Williams, who was scheduled to direct Intimate Apparel for ATP to see if the part had been cast which it hadn’t.”

Though Robinson began her theatre training at Mount Royal College and the University of Calgary, the last time she was on a Calgary stage was in ATP’s Problem Child in 2000.

She has spent the last 12 years in Toronto juggling stage, film and TV roles.

She starred opposite Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl as well as in the ensemble film Ghetta Life for which she won a best actress award in Italy.

She was in the TV series Soul Food and had roles in such TV movies as The Gospel According to the Blues and Of Murder and Memory.

On stage she has played Condoleezza Rice in David Hare’s Stuff Happens and spent four seasons with the Stratford Festival.

She is proud of the colour- blind casting which saw her playing Prospero in The Tempest for Canadian Stage and the nurse in Romeo & Juliet.

“If colour-blind casting is not the direction we’re moving in, what are we doing?

“It’s what we see on the streets of our cities, so why wouldn’t we see it on our stages?

“Color-blind casting is quickly becoming a non-issue.

“In the case of Intimate Apparel, the main characters in the play are people of colour, so it’s essential the casting reflects that.”

In Intimate Apparel which runs in the Epcor Centre’s Martha Cohen Theatre from Oct. 9 through 27, Robinson is joined by Kim Roberts, Graham Percy, Julie Orton, Abena Malia and Andre Sills.